Jay-Z has changed his name on all of his platforms, and it’s not the first time he’s tweaked his title.
The musician’s real name is Shawn Corey Carter, though it’s hardly what he’s announced as when he steps out onto the stage for a round of applause.
He’s getting ready for a reunion with The Roots for the upcoming Roots Picnic in Philadelphia concert on 30 May and the 56-year-old singer has decided to re-jig things a bit.
The artist formerly known as Jay-Z will now go by the moniker JAŸ-Z, which you’ll notice has one of those umlaut things above the ‘y’, and he’s been busy changing his name on all of his platforms.
It’s probable that he’s actually got someone to do that for him, but when you look for him now it’s done under the name ‘JAŸ-Z’ when you’re trying to find his music on the likes of YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify.
The reason behind Jay-Z’s name change
Don’t call him Jay-Z, he’s JAŸ-Z now (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
E News suggested it might be a tribute to his first album – 1996’s Reasonable Doubt – which is almost 30 years old as the cover art for it involved umlauts.
He’s far from the only artist to rock an umlaut, with Mötley Crüe and Motörhead also sporting them.
Aside from making bands look edgier, umlauts are used in Germanic languages to change the sound of vowels and distinguish between different words.
As for why Jay-Z is called Jay-Z at all, he told Q Magazine in 2000: “When I was young, I was a cool, laidback little dude, so they called me Jazzy. Later, that turned into Jay-Z.”
It’s not the first time he’s been fiddling around with his name.
The evolution of Jay-Z’s name
Jay-Z originally used an umlaut (Roc-A-Fella/Priority)
Back in 2013, Jay-Z dropped the hyphen to become known as ‘Jay Z’, as the singer said it was ‘really big back in the day’ but ‘not useful any more’.
He’d told Big Boys Neighbourhood at the time: “I had umlauts over one of the letters. I removed the umlaut, too.”
His only album cover to lose the hyphen was 2013’s Magna Carta Holy Grail – but he also styled his name struck through so it was hard to tell.
The hyphen disappeared on Magna Carta Holy Grail (Roc-A-Fella/Roc Nation/Universal)
The change to the name didn’t last particularly long as in 2017 he got his hyphen back as a statement released at the time declared: “‘Jay Z’ is now a relic of the past, consigned to the dustbin of history.
“In its place stands JAY-Z, now with the hyphen back in its place and the whole name in all-caps.”
And as if this couldn’t get any more confusing, on the album cover for 2017’s 4:44, he styled his name JAY:Z.
He briefly experimented with a colon (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
And now he’s got some dots above the name as well.
He’s not the only famous performer to keep changing his name, and he’s had beef with one of them in particular.
It may be a tribute to his debut album which is nearing 30 years since it was released (Alex Bierens de Haan/Getty Images)
Last year JAŸ-Z got into a bit of a spat with Kanye West, who changed his name to ‘Ye’ and then to ‘Ye Ye’, after the much-maligned musician went after his children.
In response, he and his wife Beyoncé sang the song ‘N****s in Paris’ but tweaked the lyrics to omit Kanye’s name and subbed in Beyonce’s instead.
While they’d made hits together in the past, many music fans saw it as a signal that they were done professionally.